Lies & the Lying Liars Who Tell Them_ A Fair & Balanced Look at the Right - Al Franken [23]
In addition to the Fox News Channel, Murdoch’s News Corporation owns TV Guide. You know how many people read TV Guide? Neither do I. But it must be millions. He also owns twenty-four other magazines, including The Weekly Standard, the neo-conservative periodical that tricked President Bush into going to war against Iraq. He also owns the Fox Broadcasting Network, which produced Joe Millionaire, a hit show. And HarperCollins publishing. Think about all those put together! Quite an empire, right?
But wait. He also owns 20th Century Fox, which owns the rights to over two thousand movies, including Dr. Dolittle and Dr. Dolittle II. Dr. Dolittle II didn’t do as well as Dr. Dolittle, but Fox also owns Titanic, which was a huge hit. Plus, he has ownership or major interests in satellite services reaching Asia, Europe, North America, and South America. That’s practically the entire world, excluding the “emerging” African market.
I would think that anyone would be satisfied with that much media. I know I would. Heck, I’d be happy with just TV Guide, HarperCollins, Fox Broadcasting, and the satellite companies. But even all this stuff doesn’t satisfy K. Rupert Murdoch. No. He has to own the largest group of television stations in the United States, plus 130 English-language newspapers, including the London Times and the New York Post.
You might notice that many of these holdings have, shall we say, a rightward cant. So you won’t be surprised when I tell you that the cherry on top of Murdoch’s corporate empire is the Los Angeles Dodgers, the most notoriously right-wing team in the history of Major League Baseball.
Plus he owns the Fox News Channel. Which brings us full circle.
But before I go into FNC, there’s one other important thing you should know about Murdoch. He’s evil. I defer to the August Columbia Journalism Review:
Murdoch uses his diverse holdings . . . to promote his own financial interests at the expense of real news gathering, legal and regulatory rules, and journalistic ethics. He wields his media as instruments of influence with politicians who can aid him, and savages his competitors in his news columns. If ever someone demonstrated the dangers of mass power being concentrated in few hands, it would be Murdoch.
But evil? How about a specific example, Al? Okay. In 1993, Murdoch, a staunch anticommunist, began beaming programs into China from his Hong Kong–based Star TV satellite network. At the time Murdoch expressed the noble sentiment that “advances in the technology of telecommunications have proved an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere.”
Angered by Murdoch’s apparent lack of support for their totalitarian regime, China retaliated by banning the ownership of satellite dishes. Murdoch knew which side his rice was buttered on, and switched to a more, shall we say, pro-totalitarian point of view. “The truth is—and we Americans don’t like to admit it—that authoritarian societies can work,” he told critics. And to show the Central Committee that he had just been kidding about that “unambiguous threat” business, he cheerfully removed the BBC from his Star network. The BBC, it seems, had covered the Tiananmen Square unpleasantness, and according to Murdoch “was driving them [the totalitarian Chinese regime] nuts.” So, goodbye BBC, hello satellite dishes in the world’s largest potential media market.
But some good came of this whole thing. Murdoch launched a multimillion-dollar joint venture with the People’s Daily, the official state newspaper. The venture produced ChinaByte, an on-line news service that helped bring official Chinese government propaganda into the Digital Age.
Now, please understand that I’m not saying Rupert has a pro-communist bias. Just a pro-getting-money-and-power-no-matter-who-gets-hurt